This is very nice, but is really just the "reductionist" perception of the world, ie mainly that of physics.

What's missing is the concept related to complexity theory that use of the word "just"here limits the analysis to only half the problem. In reality, each time you go "up" to another level of description - ie, moving from right to left <----------- there are new sets of rules and interactions that come into play that are basically indescribable by the reductionist perspective alone.

The most obvious example is flying from physics on the right over to sociology on the left, it would be utterly hopeless to try and describe human behavior and male-female interactions using equations from quantum mechanics and movement of individual atoms and molecules.

LOL, I have an example of that!

When we boil water and are so certain what temperature we will measure, how large is our population sample? Compared to the entire human population today our water sample will be orders of magnitude more while the fuzzy psychologist is lucky to work with many orders of magnitude less. What looks like complete order and certainty in the water sample is so far from truth for individual water molecules they make individual people look well behaved.

And let's not forget the split behavior of the understanding of the nature of light. Is it a wave or particle, both or none of the above?

Actually there are loads of these things and a guaranteed unknown amount more if the Incompleteness Theorem is right. And that's a good thing since it means science will never be done if that's true.

Actually there are loads of these things and a guaranteed unknown amount more if the Incompleteness Theorem is right. And that's a good thing since it means science will never be done if that's true.

Amen to that.

The right side people (in the scale), like Physicists, Chemists, Biologist, Astronomers, etc are all in accordance that science is an evolving thing, that there are more questions to be made than answers already found. Most of these people call what they do science rather than a profession. My wife, for example, has a PhD in cellular biology and has just started her post-doctorate in odontology. She calls herself a scientist, not a dentist.

To the left of the scale, the more applied people, can be divided into 2 categories: those that consider it a profession and those very few that consider it a science. The professionals usually think that their knowledge is an already evovled thing, that whatever there is to know has already been written. I know SEVERAL medics/doctors that are like that. They refuse to acknowledge that medicine is a science as well, and are more likely to think that everything they need to know, now and in 50 years, is already in the books. The same goes for several psychologists, sociologists, etc.

To a certain extent, we can also call religion a science (I am intentionally not using the word teology), because whatever faith we follow, how we deal with it has changed over the last hundred of years, at least in the western religions. We aren`t as tight ass about religion as out ancestors were 100-200 or 300 years ago. People in Massachussets don't hunt witches anymore. The Pope doesn't have that much influence in governments. Only recently some churches (as in "institutions") have acknowledged that our relation to whatever Superior Being we believe in has changed.

If some people get their way, everyone who says they believe in anything that can't be proven will undergo correctional treatment to rid them of their delusions. Of course what constitutes proof will have its own insane BS ideology as the current in-fighting in the atheist movement is experiencing over feminism. People are still people and "power" recognizes no control.

Nothing is math. Math is simply a tool for describing all sorts of things. Electrons behave in a way that we call mathematical for no known reason, it's just the way they are and it's just good luck that they do. They would still behave that way if there were no intelligent creatures to devise a mathematical description of their behavior.

I think you are mixing up scientific objective truth with the how to live your life relitave "truth" they are not the same thing. I have not come across this debate but there is no connection unless ones view of women is that conveyed by the "truth" promulgated by organised religions.

Any time you start with a conclusion and make everything fit it goes like that.

Oddly enough I was watching a DVD last night where they had a computer program that you gave the conclusion to and it worked out the justification for it. In the end the U.S.A. used it to justify the invasion of Mexico.

It was a comedy, episode 1 of Dirk Gently - based on an idea by Douglas Adams.

Any time you start with a conclusion and make everything fit it goes like that.

Oddly enough I was watching a DVD last night where they had a computer program that you gave the conclusion to and it worked out the justification for it. In the end the U.S.A. used it to justify the invasion of Mexico.

It was a comedy, episode 1 of Dirk Gently - based on an idea by Douglas Adams.

HA. That does sound very much like an idea from Douglas Adams.

Too bad Mexico is invading us and they don't need no stinkin' justification.